Atrocious
by IngridSarah
Summary: Forbidden Siren fic. A series of shorts largely focused on Tamon Takeuchi and Yoriko Anno based on the Mizuhiruko shrine fortunes in the game. Update: I've just added the final chapter, and the story is now complete!
1. Ask a Woman

Author's note: This fic will be a series of shorts from 'Siren'/'Forbidden Siren' based on one of the four paper fortunes that you can find in the Mizuhiruko Shrine during (Professor) Tamon Takeuchi's 'kill shibito brain' mission. It's possible to receive fortunes promising 'excellent,' 'good,' 'poor' or 'atrocious' luck, and after collecting the fortune as a document in your archive, it will change at random every time you reset the game. This piece will be largely from Takeuchi's point of view, but I am also planning to branch out to some of the other characters in the coming parts of the stories (this first chapter focuses more on Hisako).

Here is the 'Atrocious' fortune in full:

Overall luck: Atrocious

The leaves of winter turn to rot without seeing the light of spring.

That which you desire is never to be had.

He whom you await heeds not your call.

Ask a woman for that which was lost.

Journeys will end where they begin.

Trade is destined never to succeed.

All scholarly pursuits are futile.

Beg for pardon in feuds and quarrels.

Affairs of love will change to war.

Illness is sure to lead to death.

Marriage will not take place in this life.

…

_1. Ask a woman for that which was lost._

…

He has never seen her real face. Sketches of it line his apartment; stare up at him from the pages of books, but they're all different—some are like beautiful, sad, and angelic, and some are deformed and green, their mouths hanging open, fishlike, in permanent, ghastly stupor.

The picture in his mind alternates between the images, even as he tries to decide whether she is sympathetic or despicable. That she might be both—well, he doesn't like to think about that.

He imagines her waking, terrified, in the middle of a cold ocean, twisting wildly like a fish out of water. He sees her coughing and sputtering as she paddles against the current, unaware that the life she is trying to save has already been lost centuries ago. If she can only make it to that shore, she thinks, seeing it off in the distance, faded like a mirage in the desert.

When her feet touch the sand, she doesn't wonder at how far away the land seemed before—she is only grateful not to have drowned. As she makes her way across the foggy, unfamiliar beach, the thick, icy water laps at her heels, as if to greet an old friend it has not seen in many years. She simply shrieks at the cold and moves inland, wondering why it seems that the ocean is following her.

When she finally feels stone beneath her feet and sees buildings lit up in the distance, her heart leaps with joy and fear. Perhaps there are people here who can help her. Perhaps they can tell her what happened—

The sky cracks open. It begins to rain. She reaches the steps of a church, and she knows, somehow, that there is just one man inside. He is looking out the window calmly, watching the storm, not expecting any visitors at this time of the night.

He will help her: his heart is soft. And there will be others, too—

A young boy who is still far away; a little, terrified girl with blood running out of her eyes, and the Kaijiros…

She can already hear the screaming, see the gate opening…

She starts from her vision at the sound of a voice and looks up, realizing that there is a man now standing in the doorway of the church, staring at the naked woman in front of him in complete amazement. She is soaked, the water running over her in rivers. It pulls her hair down around her shoulders and makes her skin shiny and slippery.

For a moment, she longs to go back to the ocean, swim to the deepest part and never leave…

But then she composes herself, looking up at the man with a kind of innocence that cannot be feigned.

"Please—Help me…"

She _is_ innocent. She is going to save them all.


	2. He Whom You Await

Author's note: This fic will be a series of shorts from 'Siren'/'Forbidden Siren' based on one of the four paper fortunes that you can find in the Mizuhiruko Shrine during (Professor) Tamon Takeuchi's 'kill shibito brain' mission.　This piece will be largely from Takeuchi's point of view, but I am also planning to branch out to some of the other characters in the coming parts of the stories.

…

_He whom you await heeds not your call. _

….

After the earthquake, he used to leave his house from time to time whenever he felt restless. The woman taking care of him had tried to stop him—so had the neighbors, but nothing had worked. He never turned back until he had at least reached the bridge in the middle of the Janokubi valley, even if it was very late at night.

He liked to watch the silver backs of fish through the dark water as they made their way silently under the bridge. He liked to check for his name, which he had carved into the railing. If it was still there, he knew that this was the same bridge, the same valley, the same world, even though his parents were gone.

The river twisted like a snake below him, and sometimes, he wished he could jump down from the bridge and ride it to wherever it was going. He had often wondered about the world outside this valley. He had seen pictures and maps of Japan; of five small islands in the middle of a vast ocean, but it was difficult to believe in islands when one lived under the shadow of mountains, clustered together as though conspiring to keep people inside.

He often thought, at times like these, that he could hear them whispering, but as soon as he'd begun to listen, the sound disappeared as if the mountains had turned away.

Tonight was different. This time, the whispering had transformed into the sound of shuffling footsteps, slow, like somebody trudging through water. His heart had skipped a beat as his eyes pulled a shape from the darkness—a man, his back bent and sagging, his body swaying as though he had lost the desire to control it. He was carrying a rifle.

"Mr. Shimura?"

There was no answer from below. The figure simply pressed forward as the river rose up around him, carrying his gun carefully above the water. Tamon wondered at first if he was hunting for something on the other side.

But when he reached the bank, he stood up and pointed the gun at himself.

Tamon ran.

--

He pounded down the stone steps, ignoring the water that had already soaked through his clothes and that was still pouring from the sky. Yoriko was leaning against the base of the bridge, but he shouldn't have known that yet. He couldn't see as far as the base.

He was seeing through her eyes without needing to concentrate at all.

He wished instantly that he wasn't. She was looking up in his direction, but she couldn't see him yet. Her sight was blurred and dimming, with rain and tears and death. He could see himself approaching her, a dark shadow in the center of her vision, and he was so confused by what he saw that he began to fear himself.

God, why had he let her come with him?

"Yoriko," he called out suddenly and softly, as much to comfort himself as to comfort her. Finally, he could see her with his own eyes, sitting in the mud with the water rushing over her as if she had always been there. She was gray: all the color seemed to have run out of her through the red stain on her chest. Her glasses were missing, her hair dark and heavy on her shoulders. She looked like a statue, he thought, until he got close to her and then he could see the way her chest was heaving.

"Professor." He felt his lungs shriveling as her eyes rested on him languidly, out of focus. He dropped to his knees, reaching out for her with some latent instinct. He could feel her breath hitch in surprise even through her disorientation.

"I'm going to find him right now, Yoriko, and then we'll get help." Even as he said it, he knew it was impossible—there would be too much blood, and not enough time—he didn't have the car, and there was no way they would be able to get to the hospital without a car—

But he found himself willingly lying to comfort someone for the first time in his life.

"You'll be all right?"

She nodded as vehemently as she could, another lie, as he pressed her to his heart—god, she was so young. He had done something terrible in bringing her here. He could feel her breath, faint against his neck as he drew away.

This time, he ran toward Akira Shimura.


	3. That Which You Desire

Author's note: This fic will be a series of shorts from 'Siren'/'Forbidden Siren' based on one of the four paper fortunes that you can find in the Mizuhiruko Shrine during (Professor) Tamon Takeuchi's 'kill shibito brain' mission.　This piece will be largely from Takeuchi's point of view, but I am also planning to branch out to some of the other characters in the coming parts of the stories.

…

_That which you desire is never to be had._

…

"This is where I lived when I was a kid. Before the earthquake."

"Really?"

"Yeah. This was where my grandparents stayed. My bedroom was over there."

"It was? I want to see it," she wriggles in his grasp. At first he won't let go of her—who knows how little time they have left?—but finally his arms loosen, and she stands, stepping between the bones of the exposed foundation. He waits, watching her until she disappears into the darkness. He knows she is only a few meters in front of him now, but his fingers clutch at the material of his jacket convulsively in her absence.

"I used to wait by the window for my parents—before I understood that they were gone."

"Can you remember them at all?"

"Only the way they looked, sometimes—only parts of their faces. My father used to—hold me in his lap when he was reading. My mother used to sit by the window—"

He rested his hand on the edge of the now empty window frame, ignoring the splinters that pressed into his jacket. A dull ache seemed to be spreading from the place where he touched the house, but he couldn't move his arm. It was though it had been bolted to the window while he wasn't paying attention…

"Professor!" Her voice is full of anxiety when she speaks. He looks up in confusion as she crosses over to him quickly. He feels her lift his arm from the broken frame, and then he can see the blood underneath it. It begins to throb slowly, and a sudden surprising weakness wells up in his body. He sways slightly, holding onto her shoulders so he doesn't fall.

Before he knows what is happening, Yoriko is removing his jacket and rolling up his sleeve. How things have changed, he thinks.

"Oh, Professor, it's all cut up." She turns his arm over, surveying the damage, and he holds on to her hand tightly, though his palm is streaked with blood, "We don't have water right now either…"

He wants to tell her that it doesn't matter; that he doesn't even feel it anymore, but when he tries to form the words with his mouth, something entirely different comes out.

"I miss them so much."


	4. Journeys Will End

…

_Journeys will end where they begin._

…

Coming back here was something he'd always known he'd have to do. His research was only the reason floating on the surface of a current that ran much deeper.

Umi-gaeri. There was no going without coming back.

He'd speculated for ages on how the village would look; how they'd rebuilt it after the earthquake and whether he would still be able to recognize the vague shapes and corners that he remembered from his childhood.

Did the streetlamps still flicker at night? Were the rice fields still flooded and buzzing with mosquitoes? Did the old tobacco shop still send a musty smell wafting down the street and into his parents' house, exhaling its way through the crack in the middle?

He knew the answer as soon as he had stepped out of his car—nothing had changed. How could anyone ever change this place? It was alive. Blood ran through the rivers like veins. The sky howled in agony whenever somebody dared disturb its sleep. Its people were merely extensions: like so many limbs, they carried out its will.

"Professor?"

Something—a flash, or a shriek—tore through the moment, and then suddenly he was seeing the town from every conceivable angle. Someone was looking up at a floodlight, someone was staring into a well, someone was digging a hole in the ground, waiting just behind a sliding door. On a roof at the end of the road, someone was standing with a rifle in his hand, staring out into the distance.

Who were they? Who had they been? It was difficult to separate them when their minds melted together; it was difficult, even, to separate himself from their collective pain; to remind himself that he was not part of their misery. He closed his eyes tightly, fighting the tide of visions as one who plants his feet in the sand, dizzily, while the ocean pulls away.

In the darkness of himself, he lighted suddenly and unexpectedly on the one place he knew better than any other.

The siren stopped. Inside a dim house, a large floodlight shone through the crack in the ceiling, like the sun of some other world. The dark, wooden walls reflected the gleam, shattered; shaken open, like the polished inside of an empty shell.

The two figures within stood in the center of the floor, creatures already caught, looking up at the light as though it were a comet or star; as though they were expecting something from it that had been promised a lifetime ago. Tamon knew that they had been waiting there like that for a very long time.

He stood very still at the entrance of the village. He could hear Yoriko's breath behind him, and suddenly he could hear the whole village gathering its breath, waiting, just as it had in those first few dim moments after the earthquake when everything was grey and quiet, except for the broken streetlamp, humming and flickering over the half of his house that had survived.


	5. Illness is Sure

AN: This one takes place some time after Yoriko's (spoiler!) been shot (/spoiler!) on the Bridge of Return, but before she's been discovered by Doctor Miyata.

…

_Illness is sure to lead to death. _

…

There are moments, Yoriko thinks, when people forget who they are, and shed their uniforms and their names like so much unnecessary skin. In this moment, people are not doctors, or school teachers, old spinsters, fathers, or fifty-six or twenty-one: they are simply human beings.

Of course, some people experience these moments more than others. Yoriko is always forgetting who she is.

When she saw Professor Takeuchi for the first time, it was like that. She had been cleaning her glasses, wiping a blurry reflection of herself away in them, when a classmate had tapped her on the shoulder. The Professor, standing above her, had been formless.

"Miss Anno?" She'd nodded, but she wasn't sure how she'd managed it, because by the time she'd put her glasses back on, she'd forgotten her name.

That day, he had asked her to become his assistant. From then on, he'd come at her in waves; waves of sound from the front of the classroom, shaping the characters that she scribbled down in her book, even shaping the blots that ran from her pen she drifted off into sleep, accidentally…

He had never seemed like a professor to her: he was always too personal when it came to his subject. When he spoke of legends, of the woman who lived in the sea, he seemed to forget that he was speaking to someone else. It was as though their separate selves had collapsed, and Yoriko was just another part of his mind, receiving impressions without words. She thought she could see the red woman then, as he saw her, floating in the water, black hair spread out over the surface, reaching out for the shore.

Hanyuda.

It had infected her. Over the past year, Yoriko had thought of little else. Her friends had laughed at her; called her silly and sick—he could've been her father—

but he wasn't.

Her friends didn't understand what happened when she and Professor Takeuchi worked together; how the world folded itself away and he became neither father, nor teacher, nor lover, as her friends teased, but something that could not be recognized in words. She could not fix him, even when she wore her glasses, looking at him from over lab tables and books. He wavered before her like a reflection in water.

And now, as the rain falls in the dark under the bridge, he is gone.

Dully, she tries to resurrect him, tracing lines through the mud, like a sandy version of her notebook, but as she reaches his hairline, the pain becomes too much, and her hand falls against his forehead. Red rain pools in the lines she has made, and tingles against her skin.

It doesn't matter: Soon, she will be able to reach out to the professor without needing to see. And the others here will understand, because they know what it feels like; they know each other for who they are.

She can feel them already, shapes brushing up against her in the dark.


	6. Trade is Destined

AN: Based on the Mizuhiruko fortunes in (Forbidden) Siren. Most of the larger piece focuses on Tamon Takeuchi and Yoriko Anno, but this installment deals with the two sets of twins in the game (Shiro Miyata and Kei Makino/Risa and Mina Onda). I know I haven't many reviews, but I do want to finish what I've begun (unfinished fics annoy me, even when they're my own), and I'm nursing the faint hope that somebody will eventually read it. Review if you've got time!

…

_Trade is destined never to succeed. _

…

Risa squinted into the darkness beyond the window, holding her breath, but the grey, stretched thing at the corner of her vision was already gone. It was quiet now. All she could hear was the rain outside and slow footsteps behind her.

"This room—is this where she worked?"

"No." The door closed like a vault behind him, as though he meant to bury them both. "There were no patients in this room. Here—we came to relax." The words slithered out of Dr. Miyata's mouth and settled between them somewhere on the floor. She refused to turn around and acknowledge the unsightly things. She stared into the fog instead.

This was the wonderful man her sister had written about; had wanted to introduce them to, had hoped to marry?

She tried to imagine them together: Mina, the soft country lines in her face, and this swaggering white coat, this newly-grown pillar of the community. She was stricken to realize that the image of Mina in her mind was already fixed, like a photograph.

She was wearing what she wore on the day Risa left, not her nurse's uniform, but that old faded dress of their mother's that Risa had always told her to throw away. She was standing in front of the family house, the long rice plants whipping against her legs, her eyes narrowing beneath the glare of the autumn sun. Her hand was poised in the air, mid-wave, and she was looking at the camera, at Risa going away to Tokyo. Her face was frozen in the patient smile of a life spent waiting.

Guilt slid down the back of Risa's neck, cold like sweat. Should she have fought for Mina too? Could she have, when her own escape had been so narrow?

When Risa had first gone away, she'd thought—How terrible it seemed now!—that the only reason her parents had let her go was that they'd had one of her to keep at home.

Mina had held open the door, and had never complained, looking as though she were part of the landscape itself, rooted to the ground.

"What did you do to her?" she shot backwards without looking, gripping her shoulders, clawing at her jacket.

"Nothing."

Nothing ever happened in Hanyuda: nothing important, and certainly nothing scandalous. A country doctor's reputation could be built on that nothing; he could proudly say that in generations and generations of his family, nothing had happened to ruin the blank peace of their bleached white hospital. The same nothing that had been stifling and unbearable to Risa had been the making of Doctor Miyata.

And it had killed Mina.

She knew it now. If she closed her eyes and looked within, she could see Mina, walking in the nothingness to which he had banished her; lying in the nothingness of the earth. Risa tried to draw in a breath, but her throat felt full of sand: the air in the hospital room was tomblike, dead.

Her white fingers danced like spiders across the surface of the window, nails curling back onto themselves as she found the latches and threw it open.

"Mina!" she screamed out into the dark.

"What in hell do you think you're doing?" she could hear the doctor call out from behind her, but it was too late now.

"I'm going to see my sister."


	7. Affairs of Love

AN: I'm well aware that it's been a shamefully long time since I last wrote, so please allow me to thank every- and any- one w

AN: I'm well aware that it's been a shamefully long time since I last wrote, so please allow me to thank every- and any- one who is still bothering with this story! I appreciate it greatly, and I want you to know that I am still determined to finish, no matter how long it takes! This one deals with the eventual fate of Tomoko Maeda.

…

_Affairs of love will change to war._

…

When Tomoko stumbled onto the end of the short path away from the church, she decided to run. The crumpled red paper burned inside her pocket, the angry characters upon it throbbing hot against her palm.

She would not pass her entrance exams. She had never gotten to show them.

She did not cry, because the red was already there and all around her. She wore it, saw it falling from the sky and reflected in the flooded mirrors of rice fields, ready to give life to a strange new red crop that nobody, even the farmers themselves, could yet imagine.

As she tore town the hill, the buzzing of golden-red insects flitting past her ears, she saw herself again in squares of glass, their looks of horror in fragments. But now the red curtain was coming down, heavy and wet.

The paper was dissolving slowly like pulp in her hands. When she lifted it out, the characters were soggy, incomprehensible, no longer stark as she remembered, but equally terrifying, the feeling remaining in that pulp, damp and heavy.

How ashamed she'd been, and how angry, unable to tell them, lingering outside the windows of her house, looking in at her parents on the other side, as they moved without yet noticing her, her heart pounding heavy in her chest.

Memories of love slipped out of the window like light. She was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables with her mother when she'd cut herself. She remembered standing in the bathroom as her mother wrapped the finger, and that moment when the pain had turned to heat, and her sealed skin had made her stop crying.

As she skidded on the rocks, she opened her mouth to scream, her limbs aching and bruised from the escapes, Mr. Makino and the clear, helpless drops of sweat she had seen dripping from his ear as he'd tried to lift her—and failed, the glimmering, hollow shower of yellow five-yen pieces against the bell outside the shrine, Sister Hisako and the twinkle of an idea born in her eye.

It made her shudder now, as she thought about that look, no longer able to decide, through her tears, what it meant. Everything was dripping, soaked through, under water, but she had to remind herself of this now, because she did not see it.

She looked down at the rice field, the long rectangular mirror at the bottom of the hill, noticing for the first time the pale thin hand reaching up to meet her. When she looked under the surface, she saw a beautiful face, delicate white shoulders, long, dark curly hair stretched out towards the edge.

The woman was speaking. Though the words were not all clear, she could hear the color of panic in the woman's voice through the surface of the water. As the hand stretched out toward her, she no longer saw her own reflection, but the beautiful figure of the woman, as if a representation of some future self, or of some past which she could not remember. The woman looked like someone who might, in another world, have been her mother.

She grabbed hold of the hand, and felt herself being pulled, soaking, out of the mirror.


	8. Beg for Pardon

AN: I never thought I'd write about Akira, but here it is

AN: I never thought I'd write about Akira Shimura, but here it is. I'm playing a little fast and loose with the story here (Maybe: with Siren, one never really knows what the story is, and that's the beauty of it). While writing this, a possible connection occurred to me between the Akira story and some of the game's other storylines that I've tried to subtly hint at here. Not sure whether it's according to canon, but it would be nifty if it were true! Two more parts to follow, probably returning to Tamon and Yoriko for the finale. Cheers to all readers for sticking with Atrocious (even when my delays are atrociously long)!

…

_Beg for pardon in feuds and quarrels_.

…

The tunnels drip and perspire, tiny drops pitching into the pools beneath the tracks. Akira Shimura looks down the long concrete arch as through the barrel of a gun, seeing no one but the enemy at the other end. It reminds him of when he used to go hunting, that moment when he grew skilled enough and the animals became dumb to his presence.

He watches these new creatures stumble through the mist, grunting like blind old men. It is the same way he stumbled after the earthquake, holding onto the door of his house to find it empty, a deer staring at him through the window. He dropped his gun, and the deer vanished, leaving him alone.

He prefers being alone now to seeing anyone with a spark left in his or her eyes, to seeing the pretty city girl with the long hair who reminds him of strangely of yellow photographs of his wife.

He often thought, back then, how unreal she seemed, sitting by the window and looking out toward the mountains, even after he married her, even after she gave birth to their child. When he returned from a distance, she looked like a ghost, fading and silvering slightly at the edges against his house like the mountains did behind it, unreal against the sky. Even when he was close, he could still picture the way she seemed to fade whenever he yelled—her face paling as she held his son to her chest, her expression still pleasant, but no longer his.

And he would swear very often that he would never again, but somehow he always did.

It was years since he'd entered the cracked old house, taking up the half-cut onions on the table, his eyes stinging, asking distant neighbors in a hoarse voice if they'd seen anything during the earthquake. Sometimes he would imagine that he saw her at night in the dark currents of the river, but whenever he came close, he saw only the silvery tails of the fish as they swam away.

One day, as he stood in the water in the dark, holding a gun to his head, he thought he saw his son in the river below him, staring up at him in horror. When he dropped the gun though, the water turned black and the boy dissolved into ripples.

And Shimura does not admit now, on the odd occasion that he does have of speaking, that he sees them still, daily, their faces round and soft, their bright eyes dark and clear. He still feels his wife's hair tangled in his fingers, like the waves of a black ocean, the silver of the mana cross that she dangled around their son's neck cold in his palm. Her red dress loses its texture in his memory and becomes softer than it ever really was.

He thinks of them walking away into the mountains, and his sorrow fades, silver, into the earth.


	9. In this Life I

AN: I've had so much fun writing this part, and it's becoming so long, that I've decided to split this section into two

AN: I've had so much fun writing this part, and it's becoming so long, that I've decided to split this section into two. There will thus be one more "Marriage" section, and then the final "Scholarly Pursuits" installment to round the whole thing off. A bit of a work crunch is approaching, so no guarantees about how soon I can get the next part out, but I will definitely have a chance in June at the latest. As usual, thank you for reading!

…

_Marriage will not take place in this life. (I)_

…

Yoriko stepped up into the old house, wanting to take her shoes off even though the tatami was already ruined. It seemed disrespectful not to, somehow, but she resisted the urge anyway. The professor would have told her that it was foolish—they might need to make a quick escape; they didn't have time to observe such ridiculous ceremonies. As she turned into the bedroom, she offered a few whispered words of apology to whoever might've lived here, once.

The room was old, but neat, and filled with signs of daily living. A man's yukata hung from a notch near the door, there was a dressing table with a woman's perfume on it, pictures, an old-fashioned makeup kit, two futons rolled out near one another on the floor, touching. Yoriko turned away from the beds slowly, moved to look at the photograph, which was of a wedding, black and white: two faces smiled up at her, a little stiffly. Their eyes were dark and shining.

A sharp noise from behind broke her reverie. As she looked up, her eye caught the scene in the mirror, the room behind her, the professor standing in the door. His suit jacket was dark with rain, his white shirt un-tucked, his face tired. He switched on the safety of the gun he was holding and put it into his pocket, letting his hand drop to his side.

"It doesn't look like they've made it up this far yet. We should be all right for a couple of hours."

She nodded silently, catching her own face in the mirror. She barely recognized it: she looked older, more serious and weighted-down.

"You should sleep first," he said, edging one of the beds a little from the other, "I can wait a bit longer."

"Ok," she turned, moved to the futon mechanically as the professor sat down against the wall and took out his journal, skimming rapidly over the pages. She took off her glasses and the room became blurry, soft; almost comforting. She found her thoughts drifting toward the couple in the picture and all the things in the room. She fancied that she could see them moving about the house among these things, smiling, whispering to one another gently, lying down together here in the dark.

…

She presses her nose against the sheet, drinking up the perfume. She can hear an Ellie Azuma record playing softly in the other room. The tunes have gotten somehow more melancholy since the singer's death, as if the recording had somehow anticipated it—as if, eerily, it had all been in the music beforehand.

She feels him tap her on the shoulder and she smiles, opening her eyes.

"Are you _still_ sleeping?" he asks half-teasingly, because he is only just getting used to teasing and can't do it yet without a moment of hesitation.

"Not anymore," she laughs, pulling him onto the bed. He blushes bright red, but returns her kiss readily, his crisp suit jacket wrinkling as she presses herself up against him.

"I hate to say this but I haven't made anything for dinner yet," she laughs against his neck.

"I'm not hungry," he whispers shyly into her ear, reaching for her under the sheet.

And then there is a scratch in the record; a terrible repetition that changes the sound of everything. The room is grey, and she is sitting alone on the edge of a grey bed, her heart pounding inside her as the whole house shakes.

"Love?" Something has crashed in the next room, the record stops, and then all of it—the shaking—finally stops, leaving only stillness, and she knows.

She knows. The silence informs her. The crash. She steps toward the door knowing all along, but needing to see.

"Love?"

Knowing, she sees and knows. Beforehand.

Moving toward the kitchen, not wanting to look. Looking away at the white walls, but seeing it on them before she sees it.

Sobbing, she turns toward the floor, but it is empty, the large kitchen shelf crashed onto nothing.

He is gone.

…

Yoriko sucked in the air as though she'd just been drawn from the ocean, drowning. She was sweating, cold, her eyes wet and hot and sticky. She wanted to scream when she felt the professor's arms wrapped around her, but she held it in at the last minute with deep gulps of breath.

"What's the matter? Are you all right?" His voice sounded worn, thin, like an old record. The voice brought her back to herself, his palms pressed gently against her back, but it took her much longer to collect herself, to be able to speak.

"It was just a dream— the couple who lived in this house. D-did you know them?" She pressed her head against the professor's shoulder, knowing she should let go, but somehow unable, her grip painful like that woman's on the door.

"The Yomodas, yes. I knew the mother."

"The mother! But—she had a child?"

"A son. I used to play with him when I was young."

"And what about—his father?"

"His father disappeared in the earthquake, like my parents. He was lucky to have his mother—What did you dream about?"

"The earthquake," she squeezes out, unable to produce anything more. "Do you remember it?"

He hesitates for a long moment and then answers, just as quietly.

"Yes."

…


	10. In this Life II

AN: This one has been a long time coming, I know. My computer broke down, and then I got really sick, if that's any excuse. I'm not completely satisfied with this chapter, after all my editing, but I've decided to post it and get on with the story already. This was my experimental chapter, where I tried to get into Ayako Kaijiro's head. In the game, she comes off very unsympathetically, so I wanted to try to see whether she could be redeemed, or at least better understood, through some events that happened prior to the game (in my imagination, of course).

For those interested in the kanji, Ayako is (亜矢子) and Miyako is (美耶子). Their family name, Kaijiro, is (神代). I imagine that Jun is just ジュン, since he is supposed to be a foreigner, but I'm not totally sure about that.

…

_Marriage will not take place in this life. (II)_

…

Under the floodlight, the paper is thin, almost translucent, so that the red and black characters seem to float before him as his eyes flick up and down.

"Marriage will not take place in this life."

The sound of his own laugh surprises him.

"Professor, what is it?" Yoriko tears her sweater away from the bushes, squinting at him under the light. He passes her the crinkled paper with a shrug.

"God, this is terrible! This is the worst fortune that I've ever read!" He looks down at his reflection in the stream as she climbs up the shrine, twisting the paper into a vehement knot against the rotting wooden door.

In the black water, he still sees the characters floating before him.

…

"Come on Miyako— Hurry up!"

"I'm tired!"

"Be quiet, ok? You can sleep on the train." Ayako slid open the screen door, coaxing it gently and soundlessly through each of the places where she knew it always caught. With one last soft creak of the floorboards on the porch, they were outside. She rubbed her arms absently, looking back into the dark house where her parents' shoes were lined up on the shelf along the door. Beneath them on the bottom row were Jun's. She tried not to think about that.

.

When she took Miyako by the hand, her sister looked at her solemnly, with eyes that were far too focused for one who was supposed to be blind.

"You won't save me," she blinked slowly at Ayako, her voice horrifyingly calm.

Ayako only bit her lip angrily, and took Miyako resolutely by the hand. Miyako made no resistance despite her words, and moved nearly as quickly as Ayako, seemingly unhampered by her disability. Ayako was practically running, for she had traced this path so many times before that she fancied she could see her own footprints in the damp earth in front of her.

They would have to walk far to get to the station in the next town, but they could make it to the first train of the morning if they kept up this pace. Once they were on the train, she would have time to think and count her money—to see how far they could go with what they had. Once they were on the train, there would be little chance that any of their family—or Jun—would be able to find them again.

As she ran through the woods with Miyako, Ayako tried to imagine what it would be like when her parents awoke. Of course, they would be furious at first, but then they would understand the folly of what the priests had induced them to believe; they would finally understand the needlessness of any sacrifice. And Jun—

She tried not to think about Jun at all. He would live: her parents would take care of him better, because he would be their only child, and they would find him another girl to marry, and he would be happy.

Ayako tried to imagine what the girl would look like: her hair would be black and flowing, much longer and more beautiful than Ayako's; and her face—

Before she could imagine the girl's face, Ayako felt the dark soil slip suddenly from beneath her feet. She opened her eyes, her heart racing. Something was wrong. Miyako hadn't fallen with her, but stood eerily above her, looking down. Her skin was white under the moonlight, her eyes dark and vague.

"Don't just stand there: Help me! Miyako!"

Ayako shrieked as a man suddenly stepped forward into the place next to Miyako. When Ayako saw his face, she couldn't stop the sound coming from her throat.

"Ayako, calm down, please! I'll help you up," Jun was saying through the noise that she was making. Before she could react, he had lifted her up. Now he held her in his arms, stroking her back. "Come on, Aya, it's just me," he said gently into her ear, with his usual kindness, and then whispered, "love," much more quietly. With an agonized sob, she collapsed against him, pressing her face into his white shirt, looking down at his beaten brown shoes, the ones that she had seen on the shelf in the house, as Miyako stood next to them silently, unseeing.

"We should go back now, Aya, before it gets light out," he smoothed down her hair.

She groaned in pain, turning to look at Miyako, who was gazing blankly into the night. Ayako felt a coldness steal over her as she looked at her sister. Though Jun still held her, she felt goosebumps rise along her arms. In three years, would Miyako stare just like this through the flames? Did she even care that she was going to die, or had she already accepted her fate, like everyone else in the family? Was Ayako the only one left who wanted to fight?

With shaking hands, Ayako took the handkerchief that Jun offered her, letting him put an arm around her as walked slowly back to the house. As they made their way through the trees, neither she nor Jun looked back. They knew that Miyako would follow them.

By the time they slipped back into the house, the black sky was just starting to gray. Ayako felt exhausted, bruised and empty as she helped her sister take off her shoes and slip back into her bed. The house was still silent; Miyako's eyes were still wide open as she lay on the floor.

"You won't marry him," she said knowingly through the dark, "not in this life."

Ayako felt the room grow hot as she turned toward her sister. Her eyes burned suddenly with tears.

"You don't know anything!" she hissed, jerkily lifting the top layers of her futon and getting into the bed. When she had pulled the covers over her head, she wept silently, so that Miyako would not hear.

…


	11. Scholarly Pursuits

AN: I got inspired to do my revisions tonight instead of waiting (thanks for the review, NFO), and I finished the final part of the series, which I present to you without further ado…

…

_All scholarly pursuits are futile. _

…

Yoriko leans toward him and pulls away, the oars trailing after her in the dark water. He sits before her on the wooden bench, able neither to help nor hinder, his body half-dead with shock. Even if he had the strength, he wouldn't know which to do.

He looks up into her eyes doubtfully. They're liquid like the river he remembers from his childhood. The red from before is gone, or at the very least, he can't see it anymore. Barring some dirt and scratches and the loss of her glasses, she looks the exactly the same, biting her lower lip as if she's still sitting before him in the lecture hall, taking in a difficult point.

"Professor, the exam last week—you never gave it back to us." His whole body moves backward in surprise, as though he might open his eyes suddenly to have this vision dispelled and find himself still sitting in a classroom in Tokyo. He blinks a few times, looking desperately about him for that half-remembered life, but it does not return to him. He can barely remember giving an exam, let alone why it could possibly matter to her now.

"I wanted to know—what the answer was—to question number seven. The one about the other world; whether it was heaven or hell." Her eyes give way suddenly, and he can see the fear in them for the first time. He wonders how it is that he hasn't noticed it till now. Her hands still on the oars and then release them entirely as she leans forward, hugging herself in the silence, waiting for an answer.

"It was an essay question, Yoriko," he rasps, finding it difficult to speak, "there was no right answer." His hands grip his journal uselessly. "There's so much evidence on both sides—even the believers themselves didn't know."

"But what do you think? Where are we going?" Her voice trembles as she asks the question, looking worriedly over his shoulder. With the appearance of two trees looming on either side of the boat, the fruit of it blooming bright red around them, he finally understands why. He notices suddenly that though Yoriko no longer has her hands on the oars, they are drifting forward, the currents of the opposite shore strong and close.

He does not turn around. He ignores the long, alien blossoms and the dark current, less curious about these things than he has ever been. Instead, he feels himself stumbling forward clumsily, kneeling before Yoriko as he did with his parents.

With a splash, his forgotten leather notebook slides off his lap and into the water.

"Professor, your journal!" Yoriko turns breathlessly toward the river, putting her hands on his shoulders as if to stand. He lays his hands atop hers and stops her.

"That doesn't matter anymore," they watch the book together as grows dark with moisture, floating away, "I can't read it, and it doesn't have the answers that we need." Despite his reassuring words, he feels the sudden loss of the book like a physical pain. All of his work—all of his father's—

He thinks of his father's handwriting; his father's cramped hands pressing pen against paper and then dropping both to lift him into the air. With nothing to hold onto, his own empty hands clutch Yoriko's shoulders first, and then, shaking, pull her against his body. The boat dips and sways with his movement, and the feeling of floating is unbearable. He holds onto her for support, queasy and breathless. "I think—maybe we all had it wrong. Heaven and hell are our ideas—just signs for something we can't imagine. I think where we're going—is someplace else."

He can feel her tense against his body as he begins to hear the sound of waves crashing against the shore. Perhaps the words aren't what she is wishing for, but he can't bring himself to lie to her now, when they are like this. Neither of them look to where they're going, and he has no words left to comfort her. A vision of his parents flashes across his memory like a painful spasm, and he feels himself gritting his teeth, bracing for some terrible, instantaneous impact.

But the waves continue to sound, gentler and gentler, and he feels himself uncoiling, looking down at the broken pencil in the pocket of Yoriko's sweater, moving his hand through the thick hair that falls against her shoulders. He flushes with heat that is part shame and part sadness, his mind preoccupied with physical sensation, forgetting that anything else exists.

She turns her face upward, her mouth brushing gently against his stubbled cheek. The sudden touch tickles him softly, then sears him unexpectedly. He looks down at her, reddening in surprise, but she has already lowered her gaze.

"Yoriko," he can hardly believe the sound of his own voice, the soft tones cracking in his parched throat. He means to ask—he means to find out what she meant by—

His fingertips draw her very close to him, and he can feel the remains of her broken glasses crunch helplessly between them in the pocket of his coat. The sound brings him back to himself and he hesitates, wondering for a moment what he thinks he is doing. But their closeness is a kind of spell that quickly makes him forget. Yoriko presses her cheek against his chest and he feels who he is slipping away from him, like the tide drawing away from the shore. Forgetting himself and then remembering again, he drops his dry lips to hers indecisively, offering, asking—

His lips tremble against hers; he feels as though he is drinking for the first time in days: he is so afraid to take too much. His hands are restless on her back, holding her hips and trying to be gentle as he tilts his head toward hers again. He feels her hands taking hold of his jacket as though they are his own hands; he can't tell what he is doing with his hands, though he means to touch her.

Her body is hot like sand—

…

He lifts his face from the sand and tries to breathe, but another wave crashes over him and he chokes on the water, salt and sand. He lifts himself up on his hands and knees, and in a moment, he is crawling toward the foggy shore, naked and cold.

He finds his legs slowly, painfully, as though he has not used them in many years. He looks down the dim coastline which stretches endlessly into the distance, feeling bereft, though he is uncertain why.

He understands when he sees her, far away, but moving, like him, toward the shore.

…


End file.
